Using views to manage ticket workflow

Views are a way to organize your tickets by grouping them into lists based on certain criteria. For example, you can create a view for unsolved tickets that are assigned to you, a view for new tickets that need to be triaged, or a view for pending tickets that are awaiting response. Using views can help you determine what tickets need attention from you or your team and plan accordingly.

About view types

Zendesk Support includes the following types of views:

Default views. There are a number of pre-defined views created when you open a Zendesk Support account. You can deactivate or edit most of these views; however, the Suspended tickets and Deleted tickets views cannot be edited or removed from your list of views.

Note: On Essential you have default views only. You cannot modify default views and you cannot create custom views.

Shared views. Administrators can create views that are available to all agents or to all agents in a specific group. The first 12 shared views are accessible in the Views list () .

Personal views. Agents can create views that available to themselves only. The first 8 personal views are accessible in the Views list ().

Tip: Zendesk automatically archives tickets 120 days after they are closed. Archived tickets are not shown in views. This helps views to display faster, especially those that include multiple tickets which have been closed for a long period of time. For more information about archiving tickets, see About ticket archiving.

Opening your views

Many support teams use views to guide the workflow by requiring agents to address tickets in one view first and then others in a specific order. Views can also mirror the support structure you've created. For example, if you provide different levels of service for different customers or manage escalation using a tiered support group structure (Level 1, Level 2), you can create views for each of these scenarios.

To open a view

Click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then select a view from the list.

The first 12 shared views and the first 8 personal views are accessible in the Views list. Views appear in the list even if they currently have any tickets. You can access views that don't appear in your Views list from the Views Management admin page. For more information about using views, see Viewing tickets.

Tip: If you want certain views you use frequently to appear higher on the list, you can reorder your views.

To open a view that does not appear in your views list

Click Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Views.

You can browse or search for a view.

Accessing the Views management admin page

All of your available views can be managed through the Views management page.

Browsing the views list

Views are divided by activation status. The default view on the Views management page is the list of Active views. You can view views that have been deactivated by clicking the Inactive tab. For more information on activation status, see Deleting and deactivating views.

If you have a large number of views, the list will be paginated. You can scroll through the pages using the controls at the bottom of the page:

Searching the views list

If you know the name, or partial name, of the view you want to view, you can enter it into the search box at the top of the page:

All views containing the search term appear in the list.

Adding views

Agents can create views for their own personal use. Administrators can create personal views, as well as shared views for use by multiple agents.

Community tip! Graeme shares real-world best practices for setting up and using views in this community tip, Views best practices.

You can also manage views (edit, deactivate, and so on) on the individual view's page. On the Views management page, click the view you want to work with, and modify it as described above.

Building view condition statements

As with the other business rules, you select collections of tickets using conditions, operators, and values.

You must have at least one of the following ticket properties in the Meet all of the following conditions section:

Status

Type

Group

Assignee

Requester

Some conditions may not be available, depending on your plan.

Condition

Description

Ticket: Status

The ticket status values are:

New is the initial status of a newly created ticket (not assigned to an agent).

Open means that the ticket has been assigned to an agent.

Pending is used to indicate that the requester has been asked for information and the ticket is therefore on hold until that information has been received.

On-hold means that the support request is awaiting a resolution from a third party—someone who is not a member of your support staff and does not have an agent account in your Zendesk. This status is optional and must be added to your Zendesk (see Adding on-hold ticket status to your Zendesk).

Solved indicates that the customer’s issue has been resolved. Tickets remain solved until they are closed.

Closed means that the ticket has been locked and cannot be reopened or updated.

When selecting a status, you can use the field operators Less Than and Greater Than to specify a range of tickets based on their status. New is the lowest value, with values increasing until you get to Closed status. For example, a condition statement that returns only New, Open, and Pending tickets looks like this:

Incident is used to indicate that there is more than one occurrence of the same problem. When this occurs, one ticket is set to Problem and the other tickets that are reporting the same problem are set to Incident and linked to the problem ticket.

Problem is a support issue that needs to be resolved.

Task is used by the support agents to track various tasks.

Ticket: Priority

There are four values for priority: Low, Normal, High, and Urgent.

As with status, you can use the field operators to select tickets that span different priority settings. For example, this statement returns all tickets that are not urgent:

Priority is less than Urgent

Ticket: Group

The ticket group values are:

(—), which indicates that no group is assigned to the ticket.

(current user's groups), which includes all the groups to which the agent viewing the view belongs.

(assigned group), the group assigned to the ticket.

Group name, the name of the group that is assigned to the ticket.

Group name is the actual name of the group that is assigned to the ticket.

Ticket: Assignee

The assignee values are:

(—) indicates that the ticket is unassigned.

(requester) is the ticket requester. You can select this option to return tickets that were opened by and then assigned to the same agent, for example.

Agent name is the actual name of the person assigned to the ticket.

Additional value for views:

(current user) is the person who is currently viewing the view. For example, if the view condition was Assignee > Is > (current user) then the agent viewing the view would be shown all the tickets for which they are the assignee. This enables one view to show relevant tickets to each agent, without having to create a specific view for each individual agent.

Ticket: Requester

The requester values are:

(assignee) is the person assigned to the ticket. The condition statement ‘Requester is Assignee’ is true if the requester is also the person assigned to the ticket. This is possible if an agent created a ticket and was then assigned to it.

Agent name is the actual name of the agent.

Additional value for views:

(current user) is the person currently looking at the view. If you are looking at the view, you will see tickets for which you are the requester.

Ticket: Organization

The organization values are:

(—) indicates that no organization has been added to the ticket.

Organization name is the name of an organization.

Ticket: Tags

You use this condition to determine if tickets contain a specific tag or tags. You can include or exclude tags in the condition statement by using the operators Contains at least one of the following or Contains none of the following. More than one tag can be entered. They must be separated with a space.

Ticket: Description

The description is the first comment in the ticket. It does not include the text from the subject line of the ticket.

If you are using the Contains at least one of the following or Contains none of the following operators, the results will consider words containing part of the entered search terms. For example, using "none" for this condition will return (or exclude) ticket descriptions containing "nonetheless".

This condition checks the email address from which the ticket was received. The ticket can be received from a Zendesk email domain such as sales@mondocam.zendesk.com, or from an external email domain such as support@acmejetengines.com. The external email domain must be set up as described in Forwarding your incoming support email to Zendesk or the condition won't work.

Ticket: Satisfaction

This condition returns the following customer satisfaction rating values:

Unoffered means that the survey has not previously been sent

Offered means that the survey has already been sent

Bad means that the ticket has received a negative rating

Bad with comment means that the ticket has received a negative rating with a comment

Good means that the ticket has received a positive rating

Good with comment means that the ticket has received a positive rating with a comment

Hours since...

This condition allows you to select tickets based on the hours that have passed since the ticket was updated in the following ways:

Hours since created

Hours since open

Hours since pending

Hours since on-hold

Hours since solved

Hours since closed

Hours since assigned

Hours since update

Hours since requester update

Hours since assignee update

Hours since last SLA breach

Hours until next SLA breach

Hours since due date (for tickets with the type set to Task)

Hours until due date (for tickets with the type set to Task)

Note: If you are on Enterprise and have multiple schedules, views based on business hours will use your default schedule (that is, the first schedule in your schedules list). In a upcoming release, this will change so that views will use the schedule that is applied to the ticket.

Ticket: Custom fields

Custom fields that set tags (drop-down list and checkbox) are available as conditions. You can select the drop-down list values and Yes or No for checkboxes.

Note: Each custom checkbox field must have an associated tag. Otherwise, when you create or edit a view, it will not appear as an available condition.

Requester: Language

Returns the language preference of the person who submitted the request.

Ticket sharing: Sent to

Checks whether a ticket was shared to another Zendesk Support account via a specific ticket sharing agreement

Ticket sharing: Received from

Checks whether a ticket was shared from another Zendesk Support account via a specific ticket sharing agreement

Setting formatting options

You can decide what ticket data to display in a view, how the tickets are grouped and ordered, and how many tickets are listed per page. There's a List style view and a Table style view.

To select the ticket data you want included in the view

Select the Table formatting option.

Drag the table columns you want to include into Columns included in table.

You can add up to 10 columns. Status is always shown in the view before the columns. You don't have to add it manually to the table.

Note: Multi-select fields are not supported in table columns.

To set the order of a view

Select the ticket data field you want to use as the default data to order the tickets in the view. You can select Ascending or Descending.

To set the grouping of tickets in a view

Select the ticket data field you want to group the tickets in the view. You can select Ascending or Descending.

Setting the view's availability (administrators only)

When an administrator creates a view, they have the option of setting who can access the view. They can create a shared view, available to all agents, or they can create a personal view.

Professional and Enterprise administrators have the additional option of creating a shared view that's limited to a specific group.

Note: The Agents in group option is only available in the Professional and Enterprise plans.

Editing and cloning views

You can edit and clone views. Cloning a view creates a copy that you can modify and use for some other purpose. If using custom roles, agents will need to be permitted to add and edit personal, group, and global views (see Creating custom agent roles). Agents will receive an error message if not given the permission.

To edit a view from the Views management page

On the Views management page, locate the view you want to edit.

Hover your mouse over the view to display the options menu icon ().

click the icon and select Edit.

Modify the title, conditions, and actions as needed.

use the drop-down menu to select Update, then click Submit.

To edit a view from the views list

Click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then select a view.

Click the View options menu in the upper right.

Click Edit. The View edit page is displayed and you can modify the view as needed.

To clone a view from the Views management page

On the Views management page, locate the view you want to clone.

Hover your mouse over the view to display the options menu icon ().

Click the options menu icon and select Clone.

Modify the title, conditions, and actions as needed.

Click Create view.

To clone a view from the views list

Click the Views icon () in the sidebar, then select a view.

Click the down arrow next to the title of the view.

Click Clone. A copy of the view is displayed in the View edit page, and you can modify the cloned view as needed.

Sharing views

You can share a permanent link to a view in emails or web pages. Normal access permissions apply to the users who click the link. See Setting the view's availability. Agents can only share personal views.

To share a link to a view

On the Views management page, locate the view you want to share.

Click the view to open it.

Copy the permanent link in the upper-right side and use it in an email or a web page.

Reordering views

If you want certain views you use frequently to appear higher on the list, you can adjust the list order. Agents can reorder only personal views, while administrators can reorder both shared and personal views.

There are some limitations to reordering your views list:

You can only reorder views on the same page. If your views list is more than one page, you may need to change the sorting order of the list to reorder them in the way you want.

Sorting the list of views

Select the property you want to use. The views are reorganized based on that property.

Filtering the list of views

You can filter the list of views by the availability applied to them.

To filter your list of views

Click the All shared views drop-down menu.

Select the views you want to display:

All shared views, views shared with any of your agents.

Views shared with all agents, views that are available to all of your agents. Views that are restricted to a subset of agents will not appear.

Personal views, views available only to you.

Views available to specific groups, a list that varies depending on the groups you have shared your views with.

Return to the unfiltered list by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting All shared views.

Deleting and deactivating views

If you decide that you no longer need a view you can either delete it or deactivate it. Deleting it of course means that it's gone and can't be retrieved. You can instead deactivate views. Deactivated views are listed in a separate table on the Views page and can be reactivated if needed.

To deactivate or activate a view

On the Views management page, locate the view you want to deactivate.

Hover your mouse over the view to display the options menu icon ().

Click the icon and select Deactivate. The view is moved to the Inactive tab.

To reactivate the view, select it from the list of inactive views and select Activate.

If you decide to permanently delete a view, you must first deactivate it as described above.

To delete a view

On the Views management page, click Inactive.

Locate the view you want to delete.

Hover your mouse over the view to display the options menu icon ().

Click the icon and select Delete.

Click Delete view.

Exporting a view to a CSV file

You can export a view to a comma separated values (CSV) file. The CSV file will contain an entry for each ticket and all its associated ticket information in the view.

Note: Because of the processing involved in generating a CSV file, you can export a view only once every 10 minutes. If there is less than 10 minutes between requests, you will receive an error message.

You'll receive an email notification containing a download link for your CSV file. The email is sent to your primary email account in your user profile.

Tip: Larger views might fail to export, even though they display correctly in the Support console. If you don't receive an email with the download link, consider modifying the view to return less information, or using the Zendesk API to retrieve the information you need.

We are a European company with views in 7 different languages. As a manager I want to see how many tickets are in which view at every time of the day without having to manually click 'more'. Why it's not possible to add more views to the main page is really beyond me. There is so much unused space. Even a scroll bar like suggested in another thread would be a very welcome addition. As a quality of life change, this should be high up on the development road map.

The current views are fine if you are a small company, but if you're using Zendesk in a company with a big variety of customers/languages then this is a very inefficient way of working.

If you're wiling, it would be great if you could cross-post your feedback and detailed use case to this thread in Product Feedback. This is a Zendesk-created discussion that is actively monitored by some of our Product Managers as we gather information to help us scope potential improvements to how Views work in Support. I know they'd appreciate your input!

The reason you cannot delete/ hide the "deleted tickets" view in any way, is due to the fact that this is a system view. With that said, it is essential to ticketing functionality in Zendesk so we currently don't offer the ability to remove/ modify it at this time. I hope this clarifies things a bit!

What does 'Ascending/Descending' mean? I can't work out how these are defined.

When grouping a view of new tickets by Ticket Form and Ascending/Descending it does not appear to be either alphabetical or following the order the Ticket Forms show in the Ticket Forms section of Admin.

Ideally, I would like my new, unassigned tickets to be grouped by categories of Ticket Forms that I can determine, and then ordered oldest > newest. Currently, I can only have them Ordered by Request Date.

The fields are arranged within a view numerically based on their ID number. You can find this by opening up the form and grabbing the ID from the URL, as in the screenshot below.

If you set the order to ascending, then smallest ID number will show first and the numbers will get larger from there. If descending, then largest number will show first and each subsequent ID will be smaller. You can also think of this as the chronological order in which you set them up: smallest first, largest last.

That's correct. I have a point of clarification though; do you want the the ticket forms to be listed in order from oldest to newest? Or the tickets from each form to be listed from oldest to newest?

If it's the latter, you can set up the view to be organized in that way:

That will group your tickets by form, and the headings for that will be listed as described in Ben's comment; then the tickets under each ticket form will be listed from oldest to newest by Request Date.

If you're looking to use Tags to control what appears in your Views you can use the Ticket: Tags condition. If you need to Group your tickets by a specific tag please consider using a "tagger" Ticket Field such as a drop-down field as your Group by option.

Is there any way to get ticket views to extend past 3 months? Trying to run a report for tickets from 2018 (based on a specific field) but "Views" will only let me see back to September 2018. Support said it wasn't possible but would be a great feature.

Views can't look at the number of responses within a ticket, however, you may be able to set up some sort of trigger that tags a ticket as soon as it's updated with a public response from an agent. Then create a view to show the number of tickets assigned to a particular agent that doesn't have this tag. You'll want to keep in mind that archived tickets will not show up in views. See more information in our About ticket archiving article. You can also use Insights to pull a list of tickets that don't contain that tag which will account for archived tickets.

I realize this isn't the solution you are looking for since this will only account for new incoming tickets but hopefully this helps in some way.

I have another question: my team and I would like to know if there's a way to see the amount of tickets assigned to a specific person within a specific time frame and, of these, how many they have solved.